EP 1093640 A1 2001-04-25 - TEXT ENHANCEMENT SYSTEM

Title (en)

Title (de)

Title (fr)

Publication

Application

Priority

US 9915353 W 19990707

US 11163398 A 19980707

Abstract (en)

[origin: WO0002161A1] A general purpose method for text enhancement that is independent of the type of scanner that is used to scan a document or the device printing the document and is tolerant of the artifacts and defects that the scanning process introduces on the text, mainly blurring. A window of size W x W is constructed on a scanned page with the target pixel at the center of the window and the amount of ink in the window is calculated and the number of pixels that are darker than the center pixel is counted. The window is moved along the page and each pixel on the page has a chance to be the center of a window and be allocated ink. The invention reallocates the amount of ink in full quantities of the darkest value. Only the center pixel actually has its ink reallocated. A key principle is to make an attempt to allocate the ink pixel by pixel in the window, where the darkest pixel gets ink, the second darkest gets ink, and so on, until there is no more ink remaining in the bank. If the center pixel is later in darkness and there is no ink left in the bank, then it is set to white. If the center pixel is reached before the ink runs out, then it is set to black.